Private child care in San Diego feeling the brunt of California's new free TK programs

Universal Transitional Kindergarten is on the rise in California.

The state that pioneered the program is making a huge investment in free early childhood education. Universal “TK” is seen as a bridge between preschool and kindergarten.

The free public universal program is seen as a way for more families to have access to early childhood education.

Now, the universal program is impacting some private early childhood learning centers.

“We are going through a lot of changes with the introduction of public TK, which I am fully in support of and I do love, but it does make things challenging for a business,” Director at Scripps Exploring Academy, Christine Collins, said.

With the rise of free education, parents that prefer a private early childhood education option may find it more difficult to find one in the future.

“The families are going to have less need for us to give education to our older students it’s like kindergarten. Kindergarten used to be voluntary and now everybody just goes, that’s automatic,” Collins said.  

The impact is being felt already.

“For example, pre the launch of universal TK, I would have two classes of 48 children preparing to kindergarten and then a couple of years ago I had 36 and then last year I had 24 and then this year I have 24,” Collins said.

There is an ongoing teacher shortage nationwide. Many teachers have left the private workforce to go work for Universal TK, compounding the teacher shortage.

Some early childhood education centers are accepting younger children to lessen the financial blow of parents hopping over to public universal pre-k.

“I predict that within a few years, a decade, at the outside all 4-year-olds will just go ahead and go to the free program,” Collins said.